A Memory Of Reality
by madelinesticks
Summary: Inspired by A Memory Of Europe - a different take on where Carlos came from.


When the world ended, Carlos had been three years old. His parents had probably explained to him how the world ended - Carlos had heard words like bomb and nuclear and fission and missile and global warming, but these concepts didn't mean all that much when you grew up not knowing their basics, not being able to read about them or see them in action.

His parents had taken him camping in Yosemite National Park, and then one day there had been smoke and gas and the skies had turned black and, according to his parents (Carlos, of course, remembered none of this) they had ushered him inside.

Carlos did not know how they stayed alive. He did not really know how they found food or water or shelter, or how his parents had managed it, but they did, and by the time Carlos was fifteen years old the way they lived was natural. To him, at least.

It was a fast moving life from place to place, taking things from the old cities, old towns, old buildings, where so many people had been wiped out a decade before. Most everything had been completely destroyed in the fallout - his parents had always used that word, fallout, and somehow it was lighter and more comfortable than apocalypse or end or destruction or anything equally dramatic - and Carlos had learned very early on not to be squeamish about dead bodies.

There were always a lot of dead bodies.

By now, most of them had rotted away to barely anything or had been picked at by birds and other animals, but sometimes something was semi-preserved or cut off from outside scavengers. They were absolutely putrid to scent, the scent of rotting flesh cloying the air and clawing at Carlos' senses, and they usually lay bloodied on the floor from a piece of tile or brick or from being choked by smoke or whatever.

Carlos didn't really care how they died. It wasn't that he wanted to be unfeeling or that he didn't sympathize - there was just no point. The fallout had been a game of chance, and Carlos had come out lucky.

Or unlucky. He still wasn't certain.

There weren't many other people. Oh, they were out there, and probably quite a few of them, but in a world like this there wasn't really much to socialize for. They didn't need to trade when everyone scavenged anyway, and Carlos' family had nothing that anyone would want to steal - no firearms, no fuel, no running car.

There was no need for that, his family had said.

Carlos had never seen a gun until a man had put two bullets apiece in each of his parents' heads, and Carlos had not really wanted to see one again as he started to run. Guns and their relations, as Carlos had been informed, were what had killed everyone in the first place, but he supposed to some people that didn't matter.

To people like this, Carlos didn't think anything mattered at all.

Carlos was twenty eight years old when he found the battered old jeep, on its own in the Arizona desert. Probably twenty eight. Maybe. Dates were difficult, and even though he kept a calendar with him and counted off the days, there was always the chance he had erred, and how would he check? He saw the keys on the seat, and he tried it out. His parents had taught him to drive with a Toyota that by some miracle had gas, just in case.

Just in case.

And, by God, the engine roared into life, and for a moment Carlos sat in the seat and blinked and found himself amazed by life - an old jeep with a full tank of gas, with no buildings to be seen but for a few miles back.

Well. When life gives you lemons.

He began to drive. He didn't have a set destination in mind, and he just didn't care anymore. He'd thrown his rucksack into the back, an old bag with a few sets of jeans, some t shirts, an anorak, supplies. Basic stuff - no luxuries.

Carlos had no photographs of his parents.

That day, Carlos had been wearing a plaid shirt, a pair of slightly worse-for-wear jeans, and a white coat over the both of them. A lab coat, it was called. Apparently there had once been experiments performed in labs, and for whatever reason, those people had worn white coats like his.

They'd developed medicines, poisons, all sorts of things, apparently. In another life, Carlos thought, he might have been a scientist.

And then Carlos slammed his foot on the breaks of the jeep and came to a halting stop, because fuck, what the fuck, what the **fuck**?

Carlos had seen pictures of cities, on postcards, in molded over or half burned books, but all the cities were mostly destroyed. All the buildings had just gone down, they weren't like this. With his own (slightly blurred but how was he meant to get corrective fucking lenses post-Apocalypse) vision, he'd never seen anything like this.

The city was a large one, with all manner of different buildings of different sizes, and Carlos could see street signs and advertisements and, in the distance, connected to this one by a long, lonely road, Carlos could see another city.

Carlos swallowed, and then choked a little, and then swallowed again.

It must have been a mirage. Maybe he'd eaten something toxic and was hallucinating. Maybe it was all a dream. Maybe he was already dead.

Against his better judgement, Carlos drove forwards and moved from sand and rock onto hard, tarmac roads, the smooth, mostly taken care of likes of which Carlos had never seen.

—-

"Carlos?" The scientist looked up from his book, offering Cecil a small smile. They were in bed together, Cecil with his head laid on Carlos' hip and his limbs strewn across the mattress.

"Yeah?"

"What was it like? Outside of Night Vale, I mean?" Carlos stared at him. His mind had gone mostly blank, and God, it was strange he couldn't remember. All he could remember were his parents, but they had died a long time ago…

"Different." He said finally. "Nothing special, though. Not like here." Cecil nodded, his curiosity sated, and he went back to tracing gentle fingers over the slightly ticklish flesh of Carlos' thighs. Carlos furrowed his brow, momentarily thoughtful. "Cecil, what was it you said when I came into town?"

"Oh, doubtless compliments, I imagine."

"No, no, you said something about scientists. How everyone had been a scientist at one point in their lives."

"Well, we have **all** been scientists at one point or another in our lives." The words sounded oddly in Carlos' head, as if they were significant. There were many significant things about Night Vale, odd things, different things, but nothing that rang odd bells in the back of Carlos' mind as this particular thing.

"But what does that mean?" Cecil tilted his head, lips pouting a little as he concentrated, digging through the recesses of his own mind.

"Er, well. It just means, um, that. I'm not certain, Carlos, I'm sorry." And it was not a lie: in fact, it was quite true - Cecil's mind, where those words were drawn from, had become a yellowish and slightly sweet-smelling haze.

"It's okay - it doesn't matter."

And no, it didn't really matter at all.

All that really mattered, of course, was Night Vale.


End file.
